Edward.

I was thinking about the idea that language speaks us last night and I was reminded of the following cartoon. Be aware, it contains some language.

Language and The Brain

Quick thought:

Almost all studies of the sort show that more than 95% of right-handed people house their language center in the left hemisphere of the brain (the more logical side of the brain), where less than 5% have right hemisphere language centers (the more creative side).

Oddly, in left-handed people, over 70% still have left hemisphere language centers. Leaving about 30% of left-handed people with their "language part of the brain" on the more creative side - but not the majority of left-handed people still.

It would be interesting (if it were possible) to see how much this affects how this affects the content (or even style) of those who have language centers on the logical side of the brain to those who have it on the creative side.

Of course, the brain is a network. But the reason we are right or left handed in the first place is mostly determined by whether we use the right or left brain more abundantly. Many of the greatest artists in history (Da Vinci, etc.) were left-handed. How would this hold up with poets? With lawyers? With linguists?

Unfortunately, they usually cannot check which hemisphere the language center resides in until a person is dead or some other severe case. But it's interesting (to me) nonetheless. Why are so many right-handed people left hemisphere language people, and why are the majority of left-handed people also left-hemisphere language people - thought not quite as much?

Here the Gift of Speech Becomes a Bitter Curse

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By CHARLES ISHERWOOD

Published: August 28, 200

Irish playwright and director Enda Walsh's play “The New Electric Ballroom.”

"Words, in Mr. Walsh’s harsh but illuminating vision, are both the making of experience and its destruction. The cursed gift of speech has been used to isolate and humiliate the sisters. (“Branded, marked and scarred by talk,” Breda scowls. “Boxed by words.”)

"Speak we must, of course, as both sisters attest in one of the dense, musical monologues that they recite in turn. “By their nature people are talkers,” they gabble as if by rote. “You can’t deny that. You could but you’d be affirming what you’re trying to argue against and what would be the point of that?” And so talk they do, wrapping themselves in the strange comfort of a sad story that will never end."

[the whole review here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/28/theater/reviews/28walsh.html?8dpc

indo-european/proto-indo-european

I just stumbled upon this image and thought I'd post it here in response to some of the discussion about the  origins of language, whether there is on original language, etc. I don't know how accurate this actually is...it is interesting nonetheless.

Make sure to click the image to ENGLARGE IT.

YOU/USED T O _B E A_LR IGHT WHAT/HA _PPENED ?

Quick thought about Music as language (or as a form of communication).

Two weeks ago I traveled almost 1,000 miles to see a (Radiohead) concert. In preparation for such an event, my girlfriend (Paige) and I spent 5 months saving up over $2,000. It took us 15 hours to drive from Orem, UT to Auburn, WA and while waiting for the band to finally come out onto the stage I realized something. This 2,000 dollars, this 1,000 miles, this 15 hours of driving, this 150 days of waiting--all of this--it all came down to a little blurb of time that would seem to end before it began. I asked Paige if she thought it was odd, so many hours of driving, waiting, working to save money... and all of it just to experience 2 hours of music. But as we discussed this I began to look around and I realized something. It wasn't just us, there were thousands of other people on the edge of their seats, each anticipating the same thing: music. Who knows if they drove from 15 blocks away or 15 states away. It didn't matter. There were thousands of people lined up for one reason. And when the first note resonated throughout the arena, thousands of people simultaneously sprang to their feet and collectively erupted like a volcano of voice.

Nobody told any of these people to show up here. Nobody told us to scream, shout, or dance. It was simply understood.

Music not only has the ability to inspire a human being to wait 5 months, save 2,000 dollars, drive 15 hours/1,000 miles, etc. just to experience it first hand; it also has the ability to communicate with thousands of people simultaneously. The majority of the audience surely can not play instruments the way the band can, nor do most of the people watching understand how the band plays their instruments in such a way... but it doesn't matter. All that mattered was the rhythmic conversation between multiple notes and multiple people. The instruments shouting to the crowd and vice versa.

Do all languages have a common ancestor?

In the vein of similarities between different languages (as we touched upon in class today), this is a very short and interesting video: do all languages have a common ancestor?

Integrity of Berlin Wall

While visiting the Newseum in Washington DC a few weeks ago, fellow classmate Jared Magill and I(Jack Waters) stumbled upon this gem near the Berlin Wall exhibit.



Notice the fine print on the sign, in order to maintain the integrity of the Berlin Wall, please do not touch

I had to double take, and sat wondering if any passersby noticed the interesting wording of the warning. I took the photo to accompany the story I tell others, to avoid tall-tale status. It's legit.

The Evolution of Language

I've been reading Christine Kennealy's book "The First Word: The Search for the Origins of Language," and have been fascinated by her account of recent additions to possible answers to this old question.

For a review of her book, see:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/01/books/01grim.html

And for her website about the book and lots of additional thoughts about the evolution of language, see

http://www.christinekenneally.com/

Antonin Artaud on thinking, language, and writing...

So, I've been reading this book of selected writings by Antonin Artaud (pictured above) (along with the other stack of stuff I'm working through...which I may never finish). The book is made up of fragments of his other books, writings on painting, theatre and film, his poetry, and many of his letters, etc. Artaud is intense. So far I've been reading various pieces about the fragility of his mental state, the problems with and difficulty of his (our) thought processes, the inability of language to express our thoughts and feelings thoroughly, and other of his frustrations, madnesses, sufferings.

I just wanted to share a little bit...three fragments on thought, language, and writing...I think they are just incredible.

1:
"There is something which destroys my thought; something which does not prevent me from being what I might be, but which leaves me, so to speak, in suspension. Something furtive which robs me of the words that I have found, which reduces my mental tension, which is even robbing me of the memory of those idioms with which one expresses oneself and which translate accurately the most inseparable, the most localized, the most living inflections of thought." (from a letter to Jacques Riviére dated January 29, 1924)

2:
"I AM AN IDIOT by the suppression of thought, by the malformation of thought; I am vacant by the stupefaction of my tongue.
Malformation, disorganization of a certain number of those vitreous corpuscles of which you make such unconsidered use. A use which you do not know, at which you have never been present.
All the terms in which I choose to think are for me TERMS in the literal sense of the word, that is, true terminations, borders of my mental , (actual blank space) of all the states to which I have subjected my thinking. I am truly LOCALIZED by my terms, and if I say that I am LOCALIZED by my terms, I mean that I do not recognize them as valid in my thought. I am truly paralyzed by my terms, by a series of terminations. And however ELSEWHERE my thought may be at these moments, I have no choice but to bring it out through these terms, however contradictory to itself, however parallel, however ambiguous they may be, or pay the penalty of no longer being able to think."
(from The Nerve Meter [1925])

3:
"ALL WRITING IS GARBAGE.
People who come out of nowhere to try to put into wards any part of what goes on in their minds are pigs.
The whole literary scene is a pigpen, especially today.
All those who have points of reference in their minds, I mean on a certain side of their heads, in well-localized areas of their brains, all those who are masters of their language, all those for whom words have meanings, all those for whom words have meanings, all those for whom there exist higher levels of the soul and currents of thought, those who represent the spirit of the times, and who have named these currents of thought, I am thinking of their meticulous industry and of that mechanical creaking which their minds give off in all directions,
--are pigs.
Those for whom certain words have meaning, and certain modes of being, those who are so precise, those for whom emotions can be classified and who quibble over some point of their hilarious classifications, those who still believe in "terms", those who discuss the ranking ideologies of the age, those whom women discuss so intelligently and the women themselves who speak so well and who discuss the currents of the age, those who still believe in an orientation of the mind, those who follow paths, who drop names, who recommend books,
--these are the worst pigs of all.
You are quite unnecessary, young man!
No, I am thinking of bearded critics.
And I have already told you: no works, no language, no words, no mind, nothing.
Nothing but a fine Nerve Meter.
A kind of incomprehensible stopping place in the mind, right in the middle of everything.
And do not expect me to name this everything, to tell you how many parts it is divided into, don't expect me to tell you its weight, don't think that you can get me to discuss it, and that while discussing I will forget myself and that I will thus begin, without realizing it, to THINK--and that it will be illuminated, that it will live, that it will deck itself in a multitude of words, all with well-polished meanings, all different, and able to express all the attitudes and nuances of a very sensitive and penetrating thought.
Ah, these states that are never named, these eminent positions of the soul, ah, these intermissions of the mind, ah, these minuscule failures which are the nourishment of my hours, ah, this population teeming with facts--I always use the same words and really I don't seem to advance very much in my thinking, but actually I am advancing mare than you, bearded asses, pertinent pigs, master of the false word, wrappers of portraits, serial writers, groundlings, cattle raisers, entomologists, plague of my speech.
I told you that I have lost my speech, but that is no reason for you to persist in speaking.
Enough, I shall be understood in ten years by people who will be doing what you do today. Then my geysers will be known, my ice floes will be seen, the secret of adulterating my poisons will have been learned, the games of my soul will be revealed.
Then all my hairs, all my mental veins will be buried in lime, then my bestiary will be perceived and my mystique will have become a hat. Then they will see the joints of the stones steam, and arborescent bouquets of mental eyes will be crystallized in glossaries, then they will see stone meteors fall, then they will see ropes, then they will understand a geometry without space, they will learn what is meant by the configuration of the mind, and they will understand how I lost my mind.
Then they will understand why my mind is not here, then they will see all language drain away, all minds run dry, all tongues shrivel up, human faces will flatten and deflate as if sucked in by hot-air vents, and this lubricating membrane will continue to float in the air, this lubricating caustic membrane, this double-thick, many-leveled membrane of infinite crevices, this melancholy and vitreous membrane but so sensitive, so pertinent itself, so capable of multiplying, dividing, turning with a flash of crevices, senses, drugs, penetrating and noxious irrigations,
then all this will be accepted,
and I shall have no further need to speak."
(from THE NERVE METER [1925])

So, PIGS, what do you THINK?!

Songwriting Blog

One of my favorite musicians Andrew Bird is contributing to a blog about songwriting which I feel ties in nicely with language. It has some good stuff.